


the road to hell

by lesbianedgeworth



Category: Persona 4, Persona Series
Genre: Accomplice Ending (Persona 4), Gen, adachi pov, alternate accomplice ending, mentioned nanako dojima, this is NOT ship adachi is yu's weird pseudo uncle who gives awful life advice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 13:56:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19906816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianedgeworth/pseuds/lesbianedgeworth
Summary: Yu’s always been an inscrutable little bastard. Adachi’s seen him hold a straight face through Junes trips, home cooking, Dojima’s blustering. The sword at his throat is new, but the look in his eyes? A classic.deciding to help a man get away with murder probably should have been harder.





	the road to hell

**Author's Note:**

> the accomplice ending is fun in concept but boring in execution-- i really like the idea that it’s theoretically in character for yu to help adachi, so this is a shot in the dark as to ‘why’ and a different take on ‘how’. belle @spherekuriboh (tumblr) and @mexicanspeedwagon (here) is the president of the dojima hate club and supplied several juicy pieces of dialogue and prose, on top of tolerating me stress writing this fic! i love you belle!

Yu’s always been an inscrutable little bastard. Adachi’s seen him hold a straight face through Junes trips, home cooking, Dojima’s blustering. The sword at his throat is new, but the look in his eyes? A classic.  
  
“Ah!” _fuck_ , the yakisoba _…_ he’s not eating off the floor yet, but it’s cabbage again if he doesn’t die here and now. “Shit! Kid!”  
  
“Adachi-san,” Yu says. “I think we need to talk.”  
  
They’re face to face in the ‘kitchen’, a narrow rectangle of a room so small Adachi himself can barely walk the length. Something’s up with that. Something’s… wrong?  
  
“You THINK? God, is this about the tupperware? I swear, didn’t mean to toss it, your uncle’ll back me up—“  
  
“No, it’s… not.” The look in Yu’s eyes says he didn’t know Adachi had been doing that, actually? Oh, shit, _hahaha—_ the sword digs just a hair deeper. Beheaded in his own kitchen because he threw out perfectly good leftovers. _Hahaha_.  
  
...that’s what they’ll say on TV, anyway, but what else matters? Poor Dojima-san. His nephew was a punk after all.  
  
“I’m going to drop the sword.” Oh, good. “You aren’t going to shoot me.”  
  
“... you know it’s illegal for a cop to carry a firearm off duty, right?”  
  
“You aren’t going to shoot me.”  
  
Kid’s bananas, but there’s a model Nambu 60 tucked into his back waistband that shoots very real bullets. Fixing that thing had been a pain, but Adachi hadn’t had a choice! Why be a cop if you don’t get to pack a little heat?  
  
The sword drops. Adachi brings his left hand to his throat on instinct, palms wet with it, barely a cut, _coulda been worse so much worse holy SHIT_  
  
“Adachi-san?”  
  
He’s never been more terrified. The force of it bubbles out his throat like Ramune, champagne, a thousand other things he can’t afford.  
  
_Ha! Ha! Ha!_  
  
“Adachi-san!”  
  
He can picture the next couple of minutes in stereo. Yu probably wants to move this shitshow to the cramped living room, with the threadbare cushions and the futon and the television.  
  
Well! Fuck that!  
  
“Yeah, yeah.” Sitting is twice as hard as standing, but Adachi does it anyway, bracketed in by grubby counters. The spilled yakisoba— _god dammit_ — squishes unpleasantly under his ass. “How did you even GET IN HERE.” Oh, wait a second. Fuck! Yu didn’t look right because, “you’re standing on my countertop!”  
  
Well, crouched, but whatever. Funny how a sword at your throat drowns out everything else.  
  
“You needed to clean it anyway.” Yu drops the sword to his side, lethal, but not immediately primed to take Adachi’s fucking head off. Maybe an eye before he shoots him dead. “Also. The window.”  
  
Losing an eye would suck.  
  
“My windows don’t open.”  
  
Losing an eye would suck a lot.  
  
“...They do now.”  
  
The frame behind the Yu— empty— tells the rest of the story. Goddamn cheap apartments… but even Narukami Yu would have had trouble prying the thing off while Adachi was in the same room. Which means, he planned ahead. Which means…  
  
“You’re in deep shit."

No kidding.  
  
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Adachi lies. Both of his palms are slick now, blood and sweat and terror. _Ha! Ha! Ha!_ “I think you’re gonna have to be more specific… assaulting an officer’s serious business, you know?”  
  
“I don’t care.”  
  
_AhAHAHAHAHA_  
  
“Hey! I don’t care.” Oh, shit, that’s a face… knuckles white on the swords leather grip, Adachi could almost assume Yu was bothered. “It doesn’t matter. What you did, or what you didn’t. That’s not the problem.”  
  
One second.  
  
Two.  
  
“Yu,” Adachi says. “Are you pulling my _dick_? What the hell. Where’s the rest of your gang.”  
  
There goes the sword.  
  
Adachi’s got his hand on the gun-grip halfway to a bloody _bang! bang! bang!_ when he realizes he does, still, have an eye. Barely. “Don’t say stuff like that, that’s—“ Yu starts, retracting the blade by careful inches. “Nanako will be upset if you‘re hurt. And… they don’t know I’m here.”  
  
The gun drops, hitting the ground. CLACK. In reach, offuckingcourse, but--  
  
“What’s this about _._ ”  
  
No way.  
  
Yu’s head tilts left, god awful bowl cut casting his eyes in shadow. “I’m here because It looks like you did it,” he says, like that explains anything. “It looks like you murdered Yamano Mayumi and Konishi Saki.”  
  
“And you know what that sounds like, Yu? That sounds crazy. That sounds completely fucking bananas. I mean— I’m an officer of the law! Why would I do it?”  
  
No reaction, but it’s not really the question to ask, either.  
  
“And if I did— hypothetically!— what _are_ you gonna do about it? Is this an appeal to... what. Morality?” As if either of them have the time. How long until yakisoba stains dress pants forever? Dry cleaning’s expensive. Tick tock. “Honestly, kid, you’re giving me some pretty mixed signals here.”  
  
Tick. Tock.  
  
“Adachi-san, I don’t need evidence to stab you. ”  
  
ticktock.  
  
“Neither do my friends.” His face twitches down. “No… _Naoto_ needs evidence, I think, but not the kind they have to show the cops.”  
  
Adachi raises his hands, palms up. Doesn’t even try to disguise the skepticism. “The same,” scare quotes, “ _friends_ ,” scare quotes, “that don’t know you’re here?”  
  
“Shut _up_ Adachi.”

“Gee!” Adachi says instead, because the whole world’s spinning and who could resist an opening like that? “Dojima-san? Is that— _OW, SONOFABITCH,YOU STABBED ME??”_

The thin line crossing Adachi’s cheek burns, bleeding— bloody hands on the gun too little too late when Yu pounces on him like one of his alley cats, knocking him further on his ass and the weapon skittering behind him.

Does dying hurt?

He hopes not.

“I barely cut you,” Yu sighs, flat, like he doesn’t have a shoe on Adachi’s sternum. Oof. Owch. “I could try again, though. If you want.”

Forget the yakisoba, how’s he supposed to get blood off a jacket? Yamano and Konishi left nothing behind but reruns.

“I-is this gonna _scar_? How the fuck am I supposed to EXPLAIN that!”

“You’re incompetent, right?” Oh, great, he’s trying to be funny. “Tell them you were trying to cook.”

“I—“ dammit, that would probably work. “Fuck you!”

“If you want, you could say it was Uncle Dojima. I hear he’s crazy. Killed two woman in cold blood. Because,” he pitches his voice low, “what, the sanctity of marriage? I dunno. You know him better than me.”

Oh, _what the hell_ , Adachi thinks. Whatever happened to not upsetting Nanako _._ Oops! Looks like Daddy can’t help you with that report, kiddo, he’s already been booked!

( _it’s fine_ , nanako replies, _he wasn’t gonna do it anyway_.)

He doesn’t say that. What he says, is, “we can’t set Dojima-san up! He’s too sexy!”

Yu opens his mouth, once, twice. “...you aren’t too sexy for prison, Adachi-san.”

“Hey!”

“And Uncle Dojima i— no?” Neutrality well and truly cracked, Yu looking nothing less than incredibly uncomfortable. Hilarious. “We aren’t having this conversation.”

“What conversation!” Adachi yells, making another valiant wiggle for the gun.

“That one!” That’s pained _._ “He’s straight! And a bastard!”

“So’s Hanamura, and you passed up a literal idol to chase after him like a—“

“Shut UP Adachi!”

“No! You can’t make me!”

Standing on his chest or not if he’d come in here to kill a man he already would have and— and— and—

Well, he could maim him some more. Inaba’s scariest teenager didn’t fuck around that much.

“Look. You should know by now, right? I’m not here to turn you in, or kill you. Even if I should. I—“

The power of friendship is annoying enough when confined to manga, where it belongs.

“—need you, dammit. And fuck you for making this complicated! You can’t pretend to respect woman for _five minutes_?”

...or not.

Ah.

There it is.

“This is about Nanako-chan, isn’t it.”

The expression on his face is withering. The Dojima clan, hunh? God help him if he ever has to meet _Narukami-san_ , senior, the horror stories from her brother alone could curdle milk.

“Of course it’s about Nanako. _You’re_ the one who decided to be her dad when he wouldn’t. _You’re_ not allowed to fuck this up for her.”

A month out of school and counting, all because that idiot— which Adachi _hadn’t_ planned, the threat had never been about _her_ —

Oh fucking hell. “I’m not ANYBODY’S father, Yu! How old do you think I am!”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Yeah, exactly!”

“You lost the _option_ ,” Yu stresses, drawing out the syllables, pressing down down down until Adachi’s chest creaks, “to lie when you decided to ruin everything. You don’t get to leave her alone. I’m not going to let you. Do you actually think Uncle Dojima is going to shape up.”

Adachi had been dragging her father’s drunk ass across the threshold long enough to know that wasn’t happening. Late night television made for poor bedtime stories— she waited. Good little girls weren’t supposed to stay up that long, but what did he look like, a snitch?

She fell asleep on him sometimes. Someone should probably tell that kid drooling on Daddy’s work friend was _rude_ and _just a little disgusting_ , but, uh, chalk him up as a certified bad influence.

“I,” Adachi says. “Well.”

“We throw a bad dad in jail and you get to live another day.”

“...Maybe I wanna go to jail.” The stains on the ceiling make constellations if you squint hard enough, and Adachi is squinting plenty fucking hard. “Did you think about that, Yu?”

“You wouldn’t,” Yu replies.

Bloody. Bleeding. Nanako would be upset.

“You know when I said you sounded absolutely fucking bananas? Because you do, sound, absolutely! Fucking bananas. Get OFFA me, I’m in.”

Yu steps off. Adachi lets himself revel in breathing— breathing is good, breathing is great!— before he tries crawling off his back. Tries. He’s trying.

The kid takes pity on him, he guesses, because after a few squirmy attempts there’s a hand in his face _without_ a weapon glued to the palm. He takes it. Pulls himself up and off the spoiled food. Pride’s a suckers game, and now the blood on both their hands is incredibly literal, which is exactly the kind of shit that gets you top marks in lit. 

Oh, the pathos.

“I’m making dinner,” Yu says, like he hadn’t been a close shave away from beheading a guy in his own fucking apartment. “You shouldn’t eat so much garbage.” Owch. “Come on, nobody’s in Uncle Dojima’s house right now.”

“The great Narukami Yu can’t salvage my groceries?”

Yu rolls his eyes, and stuffs the bloody sword back into a shoulder bag Adachi... also hadn’t noticed, in the moment. Does he just carry that thing around? Small town cops, holy shit. “You don’t have groceries. You have two cabbages and a packet of ramen, that’s not _groceries._ ”

“Hey! I had dinner!”

Poor, recently departed yakisoba.

Another eye roll and Yu’s slinking back onto the countertop like there wasn’t a perfectly good doorway right behind them. If you were looking for it (which he was) the tension in the kid’s spine had given way to something calmer, less on edge.

Adachi guessed betraying everything him and his little gang stood for couldn’t be _too hard_ when they stood for nothing. The search for justice, answers, truth? What a joke. ‘Truth’ isn’t absolute-- if it’s anything, it’s sinister. Subjective. People come up with their own versions of reality; an unspoken pact to sit around in a circle and pretend any of it matters. For Yu...

... well, his ‘truth’ was always going to be his sister, wasn’t it? Haha. Ha.

Anyway. “You gonna illuminate me as to the contents of your oh so brilliant plan, partner? That detective prince isn’t exactly the kind of guy who just _gives up_.” Or shuts up. Say what you will about Dojima’s track record, Adachi can pretty much understand the urge to get shitfaced at first contact.

“I’ll tell you over dinner, Adachi-san,” the kid says, halfway out the window.

He smiles like his sword.

“Wait _up_ a second, will ya?” Yu could do what he wanted, but Adachi wasn’t adapting to the kind of hellish time management system the kid subscribed too, nowaynohow. “Fogs getting thicker and thicker out there, y’know? I’m driving.”

Talk about upsetting Nanako _._ Imagine. All this, and the kid gets himself run over by a truck in the final stretch.

“I’ll be by the curb.”

Off to Dojima’s house, with Dojima’s nephew, to plot stealing Dojima’s daughter. They couldn’t be so different. _The bumbling detective and his long suffering partner_ \-- the masses ate up a good cliche, but the actors themselves? Irrelevant. “If I’m supposed to be him,” Adachi muses, “does that mean I get his stuff? I want the mug! The one Nanako got him!”

Dojima hadn’t touched the _‘Number 1 Dad!’_ mug once. If he’s fighting anyone for it, it’s Yu...

...who ignores the question, already out the window.

The fog shifts in his wake, pouring over and through the empty window frame like river-water. Adachi thinks-- is it weird, to think of something so stupid?-- Adachi thinks that gas station attendant is probably out, watching the cars roll on and on and on and on.

No proof. Just a feeling. He’s right.  
  
Adachi cracks his back. Leaves the kitchen behind. He’s gotta clean up the blood, the desperation, the _yakisoba_ as best he can when his clothes are DRY CLEAN ONLY, all caps. Yu owes him. For realsies. The kid’s loaded, right, it’s no skin off his back.

And! Nanako’s gonna take pity when she’s awake, he’s pretty sure. _No fighting_ , like all those conversations go, the whole kit and caboodle. Yu’ll cough up the dough, and at the end of it, they’ll make something-- maybe stew, maybe shoe. That kid wouldn’t tolerate tough leather on _his plates_ even as a joke, unless Nanako was really into the idea…

It’s so domestic his teeth hurt. But hey. It’s all for her, isn’t it, Yu?

Isn’t it.

.

.

.

_you have committed an unforgivable act, but there’s no turning back now_

**Author's Note:**

> ssspoiler alert naoto nails their asses to the wall after yu reverses all his social links (even nanako at the end) and everyone feels _awful_. somebody should probably take the l here. Was This Really For Nanako Or Were You Just Projecting Your Awful Awful Childhood Narukami Yu.


End file.
